End of the Line for Yahoo Hoopla

This morning, after 30 days of teasing suspense, Yahoo revealed its new logo—the first redesign since the company’s founding 18 years ago.

Before-and-after logos via Brand New. The exclamation point is animated on Yahoo.com.

Every day for a month prior to the big reveal, Yahoo displayed a different logo variation on its website. (You can see all the logos here.)

For a professional critique of the logo, read Armin Vit’s post on the design blog Brand New. The headline may tell you all you need to know: “30 Days for This?”

I’m not a designer, and I have no strong opinions about the chosen logo, which seems fine if a little boring. I do, however, want to point out a few related items of interest.

The first is that Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, was personally involved not only in the logo selection but in its design. As she confides in a Tumblr post titled “Geeking Out on the Logo”:

I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator.  I think it’s one of the most incredible software packages ever made.  I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :)

So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma.  We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail. 

That’s right: one weekend, three in-house designers, an intern, and the CEO. No pressure at all, right?

Mayer’s description of the design criteria and process is worth a close read, even if you aren’t a designer. One revelation: the criteria were based on an internal poll of Yahoo employees, 87 percent of whom said they wanted “some type of change in the logo.” I wonder whether a poll of Yahoo users would have yielded similar results. (UPDATE: According to results of a users’ poll reported earlier today in a TechCrunch post, the old logo is beating the new one hands down. Zajonc Effect much?)

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Speaking of geeking out, my second item is Emblemetric’s data analysis of Yahoo’s wordmark: percentage of new logos ending in exclamation points (note the big spike around 1995); percentage of new logos featuring the color purple; and so on. I tipped my hat to Emblemetric’s work in a linkfest post last year, and I continue to enjoy reading the blog. (I like the Emblemetric name, too.)

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And just for fun: UK-based creative partnership Asbury & Asbury, known for its tongue-in-cheek self-initated projects (i.e., no client), developed “30 new tones of voice that may or may not feature in the imminent rebrand.”

A sampling:

 

While you’re over there, check out Asbury & Asbury’s other projects, including the Disappointments Diary and Mr Blog, a documentation of all the “Mr” shops in the UK. And here I thought I was all alone in my “Mister” fixation.

Comments

[Steve Hall]

I've never been a fan of the brand, and especially not of the old logo. So, I guess I'm in the camp that prefers the new logo. On the other hand, how much would a new name have hurt the company?

[Nancy Friedman]

@Steve: My opinion? A name change would have been a bad move--a signal that they're desperate, or that Mayer's ego is more important than 18 years of brand equity. The Yahoo name isn't the problem; the business model is another story.